VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 85 



Puritans, but I do say that if some of the work and recreation 

 were left out we would come nearer attaining- to good citizen- 

 ship. It is not so much that we salt the cattle, go visiting, 

 have bicycle meets and the like on Sunday, but the fact that 

 we wait all the week so that we can do them on Sunday. 

 Railway trains run on Sunday, it is true, but that fact cre- 

 ates no excuse for the opening of shops and stores in our rural 

 towns on Sunday morning, or for the boys taking their guns 



with them when they propose to walk across lots to 



church. 



Rural improvement societies should have the idea of bet- 

 ter cared for church edifices conspicuous and, if there is no 

 membership in existence to keep up some of these buildings, 

 let the society take hold of the matter and remedy it in some 

 way. Nothing speaks so loudly against a town as the sight 

 of one of these neglected and tumbling down churches. 

 Turn them to some good account and useful purpose, or take 

 them down and beautify the places where they stood, convert- 

 ing them into little parks, with trees and flowers, something 

 to delight the eye if the time for refreshing the soul there 

 has passed. 



In our rural towns the pulpit might get nearer the peo- 

 ple by adopting the five or ten minute prelude in which the 

 live issues of the day can be discussed without fear or favor, 

 especially affairs at home, and if now and then some of our 

 neglects of duty as citizens were touched upon, or certain lines 

 of desirable action pointed out, in a spirit of fairness and fra- 

 ternity, I think the following sermon would be all the more 

 enjoyed and we would find very often the line of duty and 

 practical theology running in parallels of close proximity. 



While the quality of country and farm homes is as a rule 

 growing better every year, the encouragement of a rural im- 

 provement society would be healthful in stimulating more to 

 follow and adorn their homes, not only the outside, but the 

 interior as well ; encouragement would come also from the 

 complimentary words of the passer by and from the induce- 

 ment for the city dweller to make his summer home in such 

 a locality. Once the summer cottager in a town was looked 

 upon as an invader to be barricaded out, but now the senti- 

 ment leans the other way and a rural community points with 

 pride to the fine houses and grounds of the city cousin; soon it 

 is found that his nice lawn is made of nothing but what is 

 found on all farms, only put together in a more harmonious 

 way, and is made attractive by work, not sleisfht of hand, and 

 so it is often copied by others, until finally the community be- 

 comes proud of the suburban appearance of the locality. 

 There might be less use made of lawns for horse pasture and 



